B-Side Guys

Two days. That’s how long Jenny Gillespie Mason, the singer and multi-instrumentalist behind Ship Says Om, spent making the entire Dream Journal EP, working at home with whatever instruments were within reach, folding in found sounds and samples as they surfaced. “Mother Director” is the second single from that session, and it carries the specific texture of something that wasn’t planned so much as discovered.

Mason, also known for her work with Sis and the Lower Wisdom, draws from shamanic, Celtic, and global folk traditions on the EP, layering them with pared-down electronics to create something that sits closer to a guided meditation than a conventional song. The absence of lyrics here isn’t a limitation. It’s the whole point. “Mother Director” gives the listener nothing to hold onto narratively, which means the music has to do all the emotional work, and it does.

The acoustic elements breathe in a way that feels genuinely improvisational, not loose or unfinished but alive to the moment, as though the arrangement is still figuring itself out in real time. The electronics don’t intrude so much as hover at the edges, adding texture without redirecting attention. It’s the kind of production restraint that’s harder to achieve than it looks, particularly when the method is stream-of-consciousness rather than deliberate construction.

What Mason seems to be after is the place where domestic life and something more transcendent blur together, the seeker and the homemaker occupying the same few square feet. “Mother Director” doesn’t resolve that tension. It just holds it open, which turns out to be enough.